Commissioner Caprichos

Commissioner Caprichos
Week 150

The banging is driving me nuts.
Last night I dreamt about the perfect words again. I used to think I was dreaming of Sanskrit but maybe I’m dreaming of euskera. My name is basque. Maybe my longing for liberation goes back that far, colonized internally in Europe, colonized in the Caribe, colonized internally again in the belly of the beast. Maybe I am dreaming of lost Taino words.
Yesterday Solly called us in to an emergency meeting. Xiomara, who knows how to follow orders, told Solly that the Commissioner, who is demented, has decreed that all of us who are grant funded workers must become city workers. It is her ploy to downsize and cut down our salaries. And, she has a vendetta against the funder who channels our money.
We were left reeling.
It’s crazy making to be both paralyzed by the immoveability of this place, the solid inertia of it and at once, the precariousness of it, the constant, wolf at the door complete absence of job security.
We have jobs because others don’t and our jobs hang by a thread.
What possessed me to give Machi’s friends work replacing sheetrock in the flooded room?
I write on Saturday mornings because work is too insane and I can’t write during the week and now I can’t write on Saturday either for the banging and the loud talking over the banging.
I can never catch the perfect words, they are slippery, like water, they say exactly what you mean fully, completely, no room for confusion or separation, uttering them is a kind of bliss.
Now, they are yelling again.
I will give up and take a walk.